Dustin Higgs should still be alive.

Give Pervis Payne a fighting chance.

Shain Slepian
4 min readJan 16, 2021
Dustin Higgs, a not guilty man murdered by the federal government on 1/15/21

I write this on the evening that Dustin Higgs is to be murdered by the federal government. I only learned his name a few hours ago, and the chill in my blood reminds me that having known it earlier might have made the slightest bit of difference.

According to Twitter, the white vans that signify that the prisoner is being taken to the execution chamber have just started up.

The death of Dustin Higgs signifies a record for the most federal executions committed by a single president in over a hundred years.

This is not a coincidence. Obviously. Like you need me to tell you that flooding the Supreme Court with blood thirsty racists was, in fact, a direct cause of this unjust death.

Like you need me to tell you that an administration that wantonly removes protections for rights to life-saving services for LGBT and disabled people without the slightest pretense of capitalist efficiency does not give a damn about ending lives.

Like you need me to tell you that a president who encourages, and in some case orders, open murder and assault on people demanding accountability for racist homicide by the state simply wants you dead.

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Shain Slepian

Shain is a screenwriter and screenplay editor. For more content, follow their blog and check out their YouTube channel, TimeCapsule. shainslepian.com/